EDIT: Seems that FF.net was screwing up the past couple of days, so I couldn't read any of your comments. Probably you didn't receives an alert either. Anyhow, I've realised that I didn't make something clear at the end of this chapter that I should have, namely the 'relationship' between Anna and the killer. So I've tried to add and change a few bits just to clarify it. Or maybe you prefer the relationship the way I wrote it before… If so, please let me know!!! Or maybe it hasn't worked at all and I've just confused y'all. In which case I'll try and rewrite again…T_T
Please be warned that there is mature content in this chapter… As usual, reviews and constructive crit encouraged…;)
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. VIII .
It was several minutes after Remy and Eileen had left that Rogue noticed that the batteries in her torch were cutting out. She was looking at her watch – the time read 19:49. Again that sense of uneasiness touched her, the same uneasiness that had touched her when she had woken up the previous night on the heels of some vague and indescribable nightmare. She shuddered. It was too dark for this time of the year. It had been raining for too long. She pulled her jacket tighter around her. That was when the light of her torch had gone from a dazzling white to a jaundiced yellow. Two minutes later, it had run out.
"Dammit," she muttered.
Beside her, Dom Jones was lighting up a soggy cigarette with some effort. She glanced at him a moment, finding it odd that she had never thought him the type to smoke. She had never been the type to pigeonhole people; but recently she seemed to be having trouble reconciling her intuitive impressions of others with the inescapable sense that her intuition was not, in fact, her own. It was as though she was suddenly walking blind and passive, with another entity at the helm of her consciousness. However many times she would meet someone, her impression of them would remain shapeless and indistinct. Like her dreams. Like her nightmares.
Anna Raven, get out of mah head, she thought.
That thin, wavering thing under her skull went quiet.
"Ah should have gone in with him," she suddenly spoke out loud in pure irritation. "Ah shouldn't have let him go in alone."
"He isn't alone, Anna," Dom replied evenly, shielding the glowing tip of his cigarette from the rain. "Eileen is with him, remember? Besides, he wanted me to take care of you. The last thing he wants is you going in and following him."
"Ah still shouldn't have let him go," she murmured, half to herself. She couldn't shake the feeling that whatever Remy was walking into, it wasn't what it seemed. When Dom had come knocking for them earlier that evening, the part of her brain that was called 'Anna' had instinctively gone for the gun Rogue had shoved at the back of her drawer two days earlier. She had given it to Remy, thinking he would need it, despite Eileen's insistences that if the murderer felt threatened he would kill his victim. After all, who could trust a murderer? Besides, Remy was powerless just like she was, and he needed some protection. If Rogue couldn't be there to protect him herself, then giving him the necessary means – whatever the cost – was the next best thing. There was no way in hell she was ever going to lose him again.
And now, she was having the awful gut feeling that she shouldn't have let him go at all.
"Ah'm gonna go in after him," she decided at last. "Somethin' ain't right. He's got t' pull back. We should never have let him go in."
She grasped a hold of Dom's torch, but he held it back fiercely.
"Are you crazy?" he levelled at her, eyes narrowed. "The killer's in there. You break into their meeting, you'll ruin everything!"
"What if it's a trap?" she retorted hotly. "What if there's nothin' in there? You an' Eileen both figured that the killer was followin' a pattern – he's killin' by usin' the elements. Why would he be hangin' someone now? Eileen said herself that ritual serial killers like this guy don't change their method of killin'. They got a set picture in their head of how everythin' should turn out – if even one li'l thing changes then the whole fantasy's ruined. Don't tell me that ain't the truth!"
Dom's lips were thin and tight, almost blue in the dimness.
"Then that's all the more reason for you not to go in there," he replied quietly.
Rogue paused, unsettled by the brevity of his statement. She loosened her hold on the torch and stared at him.
"What d'you mean?"
His jaw tensed.
"You've got to stay here," he replied finally. The glowing end of his cigarette fizzled out.
"Ah don't have t' do anythin'," she shot back, frustrated again. "Somethin's screwy here, an' ah ain't standin' around and waitin' for things t' happen. Ah'm sorry, but that just ain't in mah nature, sugah. Now y'all gonna come an' help me find Remy or what?"
She turned back towards the path, but Dom's hand clutched her arm, wrenching it so fiercely that she cried out in surprise.
"You're not goin' up there!" he growled, spinning her round to face him. Enraged, she shook her arm free of his grasp, glaring at him.
"What the hell are you talkin' about?" she spat.
His eyes, once grim, were now urgent. His fingers pressed into her arm.
"What if you're the fantasy, Anna?" he replied, his voice slow, deliberate. "What if the killer's had his sights set on you all along? If you meet him, what do you think he's going to do, Anna? What do you think he's going to do to you?"
Rogue froze. Dom's face was silent, calculating. His eyes flashed triumphantly as he realised that she finally understood.
"You mean…Remy…That was why he wouldn't let me be alone by mahself…Why he didn't want me leavin' the motel?" she faltered. "'Cos he thinks ah'm the next victim?"
"You never knew, did you?" he replied cuttingly, his large, pale forehead creasing. Water had gathered in the grooves and were running down onto his nose and cheeks. She had the abrupt, faint image of blood seeping from stone. "You're the Queen of Diamonds, Anna. The Queen of Wands, the next victim on the list. Remy was an idiot. He went around calling you that, and when all this talk of tarot cards started up everyone thought he was the killer." He laughed sharply, derisively. "He even told me all about you, Anna, everything that was enough to tell me that you had to be the last one…" He paused, looked up at her suddenly silent face, his lips pursed once more, taut with sudden disdain, eyes narrowed. "He's the one who's set you up, Anna," he continued contemptuously, his fingers moving to grab her arm again roughly. "He's the one who's condemned you. That's why he's brought you all the way out here with him. Encase this is all just a trap. Encase the killer's still really watching you."
The arm that held the torch shook; his glasses gleamed in the spark of reflected light, and he smiled as if at his own brilliance at having worked this out. But Rogue stiffened, remained quiet, did not resist the tightness of his grasp. Her own mind was racing as fast as her heartbeat. It's him, she thought frantically. Mah God, it's him…
"That's why you're not going anywhere," he continued emphatically. "That's why you're staying right here – with me."
She waited until the right moment, that impalpable split second when a muscle relaxes in an involuntarily, unheeded motor reaction, a screw in an automated machine. Dom's fingers, lulled into a false sense of security by her motionlessness, slackened. With one violent, impulsive jerk of her arm, she had broken free of his grasp. He stumbled back, surprised; a second later he had raised the torch again, only to see her illuminated form dart in between the trees.
"Fucking stupid woman!" he cursed.
Rogue heard him come after her, feet clumsy and uncoordinated as hers were nimble with fear. But he had the advantage of the torchlight – wherever she went, she knew he would be able to see. He, it seemed, was not a physical person – he had probably never run cross-country since childhood. But she, Rogue, had been trained for all types of combat situations and was faster, sprier, and defter than his previous prey. It was something he could not have expected. After a while he fell behind, shouting oaths at her; despite the advantage of the torch, he soon lost sight of her; the ring of light danced madly over the sopping branches, dwindling fainter and fainter. She half-stopped, dodging behind the thick, misshapen trunk of some old tree. He too halted. His stertorous breath sounded, a whistling wheeze in the darkness. She, a master of silence when she knew how, held her breath.
"Damn you, Anna!" he called, his voice almost drowned out by the storm but not quite. "I know you're there! And if you don't come back with me now then you're gonna –"
The sentence ended abruptly on a distinct but slightly muffled thump, followed by a short, sharp thud. The white beam of the torch skidded across the forest and was abruptly swallowed up into nothingness. It was only in the ensuing gulf of silence and utter darkness that she realised that she was breathing again. She remained still, confused as to what had just happened, ears pricked.
"It's okay, Anna," came a familiar voice into the night. "He's down. You can come out now."
It was not Remy. But it was someone. She was thankful only to have another soul in there with her. Warily, she slid out from behind the tree. Her rescuer's face was framed inside a small, paltry pentacle of orange light, the source of which was the humble flame from some cheap lighter. She just managed to catch the features before the light went out.
Chase.
"It's okay, Anna," the older man repeated, flicking the lighter again. "Ah hit that cocky bastard good an' true. Ah knew what he had in mind. But he won't be botherin' you no more." The flame sprang into life, wavered, guttered, flickered out. He tutted. "Damn rain," he added.
Rogue shuddered. The rain was biting into her bare skin with a cold the likes of which she had not felt before. Her heart was still racing. She could only make out Chase's outline for the dark.
"Ah have t' find Remy," she spoke up breathlessly, looking about, trying desperately to get her bearings.
"Remy has other things t' deal with." Chase's voice was firm. Again she heard the twitching scratch of his thumb against the lighter. The orange light flamed into existence with a fresh intensity; his face, wreathed in shadows, was punctuated only by the reflected light of his eyes. "And we have a problem," he said gravely. This time the light held.
"Ah know," she replied, casting her gaze over her shoulder. A little way behind her, Jones' inert body lay amongst a clump of bushes, blood oozing thickly from a wound to his head. He stirred, groaning, but did not get up. His torch was nowhere to be seen. "We're lost, an' we ain't got no proper source o' light."
"Hm." Chase's tone was contemplative. "A fire would do it."
"Are you kiddin'?" she scoffed, turning back to him. "You couldn't even get a spark outta wood in this weather."
He half-smiled, the shadows lengthening across his face.
"You're right. B'sides, a fire wouldn't do no good – it consumes, it burns t' ashes. An' that ain't no good to us, is it Anna?"
She bent over, searching for the torch, distracted.
"No, ah guess not. Even if we could get a fire t' light, it'd only peter out on us. Best thing is t' find the…"
She stopped, grasping onto something cold and cylindrical hidden inside the brush – the torch. But as soon as it was clasped between her frozen fingers, Chase's boot had kicked it out of her hand and back into the undergrowth.
"What the fuck are you doin'?" she rounded on him, enraged; but he faced her quite calmly in the fading glow of the lighter, his expression solemn.
"We don't need it," he told her, matter-of-factly. "It's better like this. The dark is always better for this." He paused, perusing her, head cocked to one side, assessing. With that look, something cold and inexplicable grasped her, so that she was suddenly quiet, disbelieving. Though her expression had not changed, he seemed to recognise the subtle transformation inside her – that jangling of neurotransmitters, pheromones, hormones; the increase in her pulse rate, the fine sheen of perspiration on her skin; the imperceptible electric impulses that now coursed through her, unseen yet eloquent. The flame spurted. His eyes were glowing in the half-darkness, as if what he felt in her animated the gaunt shadow of a man he had always been. What she saw wasn't Chase, but a killer.
And then she understood.
"It's you, isn't it," she stated quietly, her voice trembling involuntarily. He simply smiled at her, lifting the lighter, his gaze flickering over her, silent, measured. His expression was mild; but his eyes, glimmering dimly in the darkness, were ravenous.
"You're afraid now," he stated calmly. There was a strange hunger in his eyes, a compulsive greed that would not die, that saddened him because it owned him. "You don't know how happy that makes me – for you, for me, for the both of us. You've never really been afraid, have you, Anna? Not the way you're afraid now. The only thing you've ever been afraid of is yourself. That intrigues me. A lot of people, their fear is so constant, so muted that it hardly makes an impact. But you, you're different. All that fear, focused so hard inside yourself that it feels like you're gonna implode with it. It needs to come out, Anna. It needs to come out so that we can both taste it."
There was self-satisfaction on his face, as if he had unlocked her greatest secret. She said nothing. He frowned momentarily, continued.
"It's okay, Anna," he assured her soberly. "It's okay. It's doesn't hurt me, t' feel your pain. You see, ah'm like you – ah'm a mutant. Ah can suck up people's emotions like they're water. All that negativity inside you, ah can get rid of it for you an' make it mine. An' all those other women, they were in so much pain, it was easy to put them out of their misery."
Rogue was silent. She could run, but she had no light and would have no idea of where she was going. Besides, she seemed to recall that Lorna Dane's secondary mutation was the same as Chase's – she could convert negative emotions into energy, increasing both her strength and agility. If the same were the case with Chase, Rogue wouldn't stand much of a chance against him, powerless as she was. He was no telepath, and he could not read her – but he was an empath and could read her fear, and that was enough.
"You didn't have t' kill them," she returned, quietly, her mind working rabidly for an escape route. "You don't have t' kill me."
He smiled again, that old, quaint little smile. "On the contrary, ah did, an' ah do. Ah admit, the others were a bit superfluous, but they were a part o' the ritual, an' ah couldn't just leave them out, could ah? You, on the other hand, you're the special one. You're the first and last in the pack. La Reine de Diamants. The Queen of Diamonds."
The flame wavered, then slowly flickered out. His face, his unassuming mask, disappeared, but for the faint kindling glow of his eyes.
Queen of Diamonds.
"Remy?" she asked into the darkness. Her breath cleaved into the rain, leaving a misty imprint on the air that she could not see. "Remy wanted you t' do this?"
"You betrayed him," the darkness replied. "The first thing ah felt when the two of you came into town was that betrayal, the death that you gave him. Ah couldn't get it out o' mah head. You're the source of it all, Anna, the source of all the pain inside us. He even tried to get rid of you himself, but ah knew he'd never be able to finish the job. He cares for you too much. That's why ah thought ah'd help him out." He paused; the light of his eyes dimmed, and when she next saw them, they were right beside her face; his breath grazed lightly against her bare neck, dispelling the flinty slap of the rain with its rank warmth. "Do you know where the pain inside us comes from, Anna? Love, hate, death. That's what you've inflicted on us. That's what we're going to inflict on you."
His lips brushed the soft spot beneath her ear; she was aghast to find herself stirring in both revulsion and pleasure. It horrified her that he knew how to kiss her, that his lips touched her neck with that same familiar tenderness that should not have belonged to him, that he now used to deceive her; it horrified her to know that her repugnance was tainted with that strange, impersonal first flush of arousal. It could have been with rapture or disgust that lashed out with her fist in the vague direction of his outline; she would never know. Once upon a time such a blow might have killed a man. But now he caught her wrist easily, wrestling her back, and she screamed in a frustration that she had never felt before, a frustration at her own impotence.
Chase laughed. She had never heard a laugh like it, a laugh of such pure delight, of such unbridled ecstasy. The rawness of her fear and her frustration was feeding him, and more than that, intoxicating him; for she had never felt fear like this, never felt frustration like this, it was all so new to her, so new and terrifying that she couldn't hold it down… She realised, wildly, that for the first time she was normal, that this was what it was like to be normal, to be afraid of the unknown because she was a part of the unknown no longer.
That was what terrified her.
That was why he laughed.
She fought with him for an indeterminable amount of time – the more she fought, the stronger he became – time held no meaning, it was divorced from their struggle, it no longer contained it. It could have been minutes or seconds before he became tired of her; it was business as usual when he struck her across the face with his fist, sending her reeling back into the brush so that she knew what it was like to be hit with a strength that was not even a fraction of that which she had once possessed. She gasped, the pain searing through the left side of her face like a hot knife scoring across her skin. She attempted to scramble to her feet again – Rogue was never one to lay down and die quietly – but of course, he knew that already. He knew all that Rogue was and would be, although he would never know where she came from, what her real name was, or how many years had claimed her; all were irrelevant. What mattered was what he understood of her; the quickening of her breath, the pounding of her heart, the racing of her pulse, the sum of all those indeterminate parts that made her react, that made her undeniably human.
He knew she would get up and challenge him. He knew she was a fighter, a scrapper. His reaction was faster. That she should challenge him only increased his lust. She was, after all, la reine des reines. He lunged at her, knowing she could not see in the dark as he could; she was bowled over, back into the shrubbery, bewildered, terrified, panting. Panting! He was excited. He held her down, her wet, struggling limbs. Love, hate and death. Until a few days ago, the combination had been alien to him. Now it encompassed him so completely that he wasn't even sure where Chase began and Remy ended. Nothing seemed so pure and uncomplicated as love, hate and death.
"We'll do it this way round," he told her, unable to contain his excitement as he held her, as she struggled. "It's better, if we do it this way… That way, the fire can come later…Don't fight like that gal, we don't want t' hurt you, but it's for your own good…You don't know how much we love you, Anna – almost makes us wish we didn't have t' kill you…"
Rogue suddenly stopped resisting, her head swimming. Something was happening inside her skull, she could feel it, like she had felt it the night he had killed Lizzie Brown, like the day he had killed Dottie MacKenzie. Something was moving. She felt Chase like a feather brushing against the edge of her senses as he released her arm and began fumbling at the flies of her jeans. Whatever was inside her, she fought it. She couldn't lose herself now. She had to keep calm, to concentrate. She had to remain Rogue…
A surge of will, and suddenly she was back on the surface. He had already undone her flies and was whimpering like a sick puppy. But her arm was free. One arm! Without thinking she forced all the strength she could into that one numb limb and swung it round violently into his face. It connected, so awkwardly that at first she thought she hadn't even hit him. But it was unexpected enough that Chase was momentarily stunned. She took that slim window of opportunity to slam her knee into his groin. He groaned, loosening his grip on her; it was just enough for her to shrug free of her jacket and shove him aside. He keeled over, groaning and cursing. Then, without even knowing how, she was onto her feet and running into the arms of the darkness.
He came bounding into her periphery a minute later, subtle and insidious as the werewolf, his breath short, hoarse, clipped as her own – she quickened her pace, her hands her only guide in the darkness. Whatever it was that tripped her had lain hidden; it must have been hidden, she later thought, because the staccato rhythm of his breathing was punctuated by one short, startled yelp before he, too, fell.
Rogue tumbled into the brush, slipping on slushy wet mud and slick, sodden leaves. Something scored into her calf as she fell, something sharp and jagged; she felt her own skin tear, shred, erupt into a conflagration of incandescent, unfamiliar pain. She half-screamed, the cry driven out of her lungs as she hit the ground chest first. Chase was cursing, but he had the advantage of night vision – she felt his hands straining in the darkness, clambering up her wounded shin, pawing at the hem of her jeans.
She whimpered, trying desperately to shake his grasp, but her leg was frozen numb with pain and she could not move it. His fingers were clawing at her, dragging her towards him, but she fought to repel his grasp, twisting her body violently in the mud. She was wounded, tired, frightened. The more she fought, the fiercer he became. She could barely move. But she couldn't give in. She just couldn't…
In silent answer the fish under her skull whispered, shifted, rearranged. Whatever the stolen souls were doing, they were working for her. She felt it unequivocally. She still had a chance. She only had to fight for it.
Driving her elbows into the thick, viscous earth, Rogue strained forwards, teeth clenched, eyes streaming with the pain of her wound. She shunted an inch, stomach sliding in the dirt; but still she held on, so vehemently that the pain of her injury increased. No. Mustn't cry out. Wastes too much energy. Got to focus. Got to…
She bit into her lip so hard it bled; but she'd moved another few inches on her elbows and now the jeans were halfway down her thighs. Once more inch. She jammed one elbow into the mire for leverage, only to strike it against something unseen. The skin ruptured, the bone cracked. No screaming. Her teeth gouged into her lip. She twisted again and suddenly, without warning, she was out of the brush and scrabbling onto the road. Then it was easy. She wriggled violently out of the sodden jeans and somehow – in a surge of exhilaration and strength perhaps, she did not know – she managed to get onto her feet.
Out of the woods. Out of the wilds. Onto the road. Into civilisation.
She ran down the darkened lane and called out, remembering vaguely that Eileen had stationed cops outside the forest; but her voice was drowned out by the storm and by the time she had covered a few yards the pain had overtaken her and she half-stumbled, half-limped on into the gaping horizon. No car, no truck, no person was in sight. Fucking cops! Her right leg was now throbbing dully and covered in blood. Her arm was a starburst of agony.
"Someone! Please! Anyone!" She wept. For the first time, cold, half-dressed, unseen, alone, normal, she wept. And her scar was hurting, her heart was aching so damn much… "Remy!" The name, so familiar, was her only comfort – an incentive for her to fight on. She scrubbed her eyes, raised her voice. "Help me!"
Arms came at her from nowhere, and for a frantic second she thought it was him, her lover, her love, until she hit the grass verge and felt that unfamiliar weight on top of her. Chase was merely a shadow in the dark, inhumanly fast, unnaturally silent; red eyes blazed out at her from some great gulf of seeming nothingness.
She yelped as he wrestled her onto her back, unable to scream anymore. She could no longer fight him. She was too wracked with pain, too cold, too exhausted. And the scar…
"Remy," she sobbed.
"It's okay," he assured her, and his tone was calm, reasonable. "It's all been arranged. He gave me permission. He told me himself. He gave me the signal. 'My Queen o' Diamonds', he said. You can't fight that can you? You can't fight the man you love."
No – he was right in that. She couldn't. The agony in her leg and arm rose into a tight crescendo then suddenly and inexplicably descended into numbness. The world swam. Rogue could hardly keep her eyes open.
"You can't fight the man who loves you, can you?"
Dimness. So dim, dimmer than the squalid black night.
Rogue closed her eyes.
He straddled her, his fingers pushing aside the panties and pressing into her softness. He exclaimed in ecstasy, she gasped – or thought she did, the mouth was hers, but the voice was not. Rogue, disembodied, said nothing. Someone else opened her eyes, someone else felt his rough, callused fingers inside her sex and gasped. The background, the rain, the faint hum of an engine, all was as dim as the night itself. He was muttering to her, saying her name, the name he thought was hers, proclamations of love, obscenities. Then he left off fumbling her, and there was the sound of his hands unzipping his flies, of his grunts as he shifted his hardness against her and…
Rogue shut out the lights. Green eyes blazed in the darkness, the eyes of a mystery, a paradox unfolded. A memory, a memory came, of hands and grunts and hardness. A memory…
Lifting her head up to the dripping canopies, Anna opened her mouth and howled.
That was when the gunshot rang.
Where Anna's howl ended, Chase's began. He rolled away from her, shrieking like a wild animal, clutching his bloody, glistening, half-obliterated shoulder. Anna blinked.
"Daddy…?" she began, confused; an interpolation of memory onto reality had occurred, covertly; past had folded over unconnected present: what she saw now was not supposed to have happened. Her eyes lifted to a rescuer that had never come before. Remy, standing in the road, gun in hand. She gaped.
"Step away from her, Chase," he ordered, cocking back the hammer. "Or I swear t' God I'll put a bullet straight through your head."
Chase seethed – the sound emitted from between his teeth in a vampiric hiss.
"Don't do this Remy," he croaked. Blood bubbled between his fingers. "You know this has t' be done. It's what she deserves, that bitch! She don't even know what she did to you, but ah know. Ah know. Ever since you got into town, ah could feel right inside you like she never could."
"You got dat wrong, Chase," Remy remarked coolly, tracking the line of the barrel against his head. "She been where you been before. She knows what it's like. God knows bein' inside my head is bound t' drive anyone insane. An' it hurts, I know. You don't have t' do dis."
"Too late, Remy," Chase spat contemptuously. "This is what you asked for. You didn't even have to say anythin'. Ah could feel it. Why the fuck d'you think ah sent you the Death card?"
Remy paused and stared, the gun lowered, water trickling down his face, eyes dulled.
"Death, the soul half 'wake an' half 'sleep," he murmured.
"So you understood mah message," Chase smirked, scrambling onto his feet. "Ah thought you would. When you first got here, ah was able to taste the sweetness o' Death, an' it was right inside you, Remy, jus' like it's been inside me the day mah wife an' mah two boys left me. Been playin' with those damn cards most o' mah life, Remy, just like you play with yours, but for the first time, they came t' life, they had meanin', they could tell the future. Death was inside you, but it hadn't come t' claim you. Ah knew it hurt you, Remy, ah knew you felt unfinished. Ah had t' help you move on."
"Redemption through sacrifice," Remy mumbled, sudden understanding on his face, but there was no joy, no communion with that knowledge. Chase nodded, his expression triumphant.
"Yes – redemption, renewal, rebirth. All your passion, all your love was dead. What ah did, ah did for the both of us, Remy. The Queens were the sacrifice, the ritual of decay, of putrefaction. First ah purged the queen of earth, the queen of the physical, of the body. Then air, the mind; and water, the emotions. Fire is last – regeneration. She," and he gestured towards Anna lying, shuddering in the grass, "the one who betrayed you, Queen of Wands, Queen of Diamonds, she is your phoenix. This is her own redemption as well as yours."
"No," Remy shook his head slowly. "She's already redeemed me, she already gave me back my life. You've got it all wrong, Chase. She ain't de Queen of Diamonds. She's my Queen of Hearts. You're killin' de wrong girl, homme. De cycle's broken. It's over."
Chase tottered, silent; what she saw was this – an old man, bedraggled, in the rain, someone else. But then he growled, low, menacing; quick and fluid as the leopard he sprung at Remy, knocking the gun from his hand and sending it spiralling into the undergrowth. Remy, taken by surprise, took a deceptively heavy punch to the ground – the next moment, Chase's hands were around his throat, stronger than his scrawny frame belied.
"You've spoiled everythin'!" he shrieked – Remy didn't think he'd ever heard such despair as what he heard in that voice. "Everythin'! She was meant t' be the last one! She was the one who was killin' you! She had t' be the last!"
In the darkness, 'she' scrambled quietly into the shrub, dragging herself sideways, straining, weeping, gone.
"Non," Remy replied hoarsely. "Without her, I'd be dead anyway. What you felt dat was lost inside me, it's all inside her. We belong to each other, body an' soul. Dat's why Remy's only half here. 'Cos a part o' him is her."
The fire in Chase's eyes floundered. His face shrivelled. His grip withered. Tears were in his voice.
"She doesn't know," he protested, suddenly weak, impotent. "She doesn't know how cruel and selfish she is, to have stopped you from crossing over. She deserves t' die. She deserves t' die so that you can be free, so that you can live again."
"No." Remy shook his head. "I love her," he said. He knew it would condemn him. He was tainted, flawed as she was, a ritual gone wrong, a sin to be cleansed. That was all he ever was. Chase was weeping, but his hands tightened again and strangely, a part of Remy wanted it, he wanted to face that fine line once more.
But Anna is there, on the edge of the road, on her knees, gun poised in one hand, and she doesn't shake, she doesn't hesitate, she was taught so young to handle a gun.
"You shouldn't have," she sobs, "You hurt meh, you shouldn't have hurt meh, why did you hurt meh so much?"
Chase turns his head; he feels then, the anguish, the hate, the irreparable wound that is Anna Raven, so acutely that she displaces everything else inside him, and the love and hate and death he feels is no longer Remy's; it is Anna's. He no longer understands Remy; what he understands is her. He cannot help but respond to her in kind.
"Oh Anna," he weeps, though he doesn't even know what he says; the words, the role are not and never were his. "Ah didn't want t' hurt you Anna, ah only did it 'cause ah love you."
The words are familiar to her.
Too late, too late to be sorry; his words are merely a revision of a memory long gone, too long gone.
Taking aim, Anna pulls the trigger and shoots her imagined father dead.
For the first time, Chase Beddows truly knows what it's like to cross over that hazy line of no-return.
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